Page 10 of Untamed Heart
Risking discovery but unable to stop myself, I peered around the house. They stood just off the street, using the nearby streetlight to look into her handbag. Smiling, eyebrow arched, Kyle drew out a key.
Her key.
To his house.
She shook her head as he kissed her nose, the intimacy of the moment yanking me back into the shadows with a ferocity that shocked me.
‘Thank you, baby,’ she whispered as they drew closer, their soles shuffling on the steps. Blankly I wondered if I’d left anything of mine in the house, whether they’d see it. Whether it would matter. ‘At least I left my pyjamas from last time, huh?’
‘No need for those,’ he growled as the scrape and click of her key pushed into the lock. ‘Completely superfluous.’
She giggled as the door opened, light from the hall lamp spilling out onto the path. I caught her perfume then, as recognizable as the need in his voice, the expression I knew he would be wearing. His fingers would brush her hips or waist, his eyes already making light work of any buttons.
Chanel No5.
The same scent his mother wore.
A savage urge to laugh overwhelmed me and I bit down on my fist to stop it. I pictured telling Hestia, forced her face into my mind instead, her reaction.That guy is such a fucking basic Freudian stereotype.Anything to not be here, the interloper in the dark, hiding like a frightened animal.
The door slammed shut, cutting it all off. The light, their words, her smell.
I kept my fist in my mouth as the tears fell freely, running across my fingers and pooling at my wrist.
My knees protested, their stress overwhelming the rest of me. Pulling myself up, my fingernails digging into the brick, I realized I couldn’t feel the cold any more at least. But standing in the shadows, looking out at the street, a bigger realization threatened to make me feel everything all at once. The sheer scale of rejection in only twenty-four hours.
‘No,’ I said to myself, jumping at the sound in the quiet. I refused to process all of this now.
New plan. More alcohol.
Maybe some fried chicken.
As I walked out of the shadows, across the path, I knew full well that Kyle would be way too busy to look out of the front windows and see me. I paused, turning onto the street, resisting one last look at the house I was never quite let into.
Icy-calm mode activated once again, I cut the shortest possible path to the nearest twenty-four-hour store, the only thing now open. Their selection of alcohol was unbearablyKyle. The wines I’d seen in his rack, Bollinger and Pol Roger behind the counter; even the small German beers he preferred. So I chose the cheapest, least Kyle thing I could see: a small bottle of tequila.
Walking slowly down empty streets, sipping and wincing intermittently as the tequila scorched a path down my throat, my subconscious whispered words of warning. Alone at this time of the morning, barely anyone around . . . A bus stop came into view, the number of the bus that went right past my flat due to arrive. Three women were perched on the plastic bench already, chatting and laughing. I gave into the sensible half of my brain and walked up to it, keeping my head down and staying back. Within seconds their noise had petered out.
‘You all right, babe?’
I looked up, just as the bus rolled into view. One of the women stepped towards me, her frown marring her immaculate make-up, a black silk bomber jacket over a denim jumpsuit. Her two friends hung back, concern on their faces too.
‘Umm, yeah,’ I mumbled, wondering if my mascara had run. Quickly swiping my finger under my eyes, I realized my whole face was wet, that I had somehow been crying without realizing. As the bus arrived, they went back to their conversation and we all boarded, finding seats as the driver pulled away. Sitting a few rows in front of them, I felt their eyes on me between the snippets of their conversation as the bus looped through the south London streets, finally trundling along my road. I pressed the bell to get off, risking a glance at the girls as I stood, the sway of my movements not entirely due to the bus.
A small smile was on the jumpsuit girl’s face. Not one of judgement, just concern.
I tried to smile back, but my face crumpled. Tasting tears, I stepped off into the dark as the bus roared away, the warmth of the fumes dissipating into silence. Crossing the road to my flat, I realized that it was likely the first kind gesture without motive that I’d experienced from anyone, other than Hestia, in weeks. Months.
The life I’d thought I’d built here no longer existed.
It was empty. Just like my heart.
CHAPTER4
It wasn’t until I was on my second peppermint tea, a dry cracker from an hour earlier apparently staying down for now, that I felt brave enough to make a call.
As the phone began to ring at the other end, I rubbed my temples, closing my eyes to the weak sunlight filtering in through my kitchen blinds.
‘Oh, hey honey,’ my mum said as she picked up, surprise in her tone. Her soft American accent, chiselled away by over thirty years in theUK, always sent me straight back to my childhood. ‘This is a nice surprise! I thought you’d be at work. Are you having a day off?’
